Hooray for NACS

When I got my Tesla home, the first thing I bought was a J1772 to Tesla charge Port adapter so I could charge from my existing charge stations in the garage. The wall unit was installed in 2011 to support my first Nissan Leaf and has since faithfully served the second Leaf, the eBugeye, the evTD, and the PorschEV. Not surprisingly, it worked perfectly with the Tesla.

While the eBugeye was in the shop for body repair I got to thinking about adding a charge port to the flip-up gas cap so it could be charged from an exterior port. Obviously this was not an original idea. My friends at Bugeyeguys.com showed one on one of their FrogE conversions (starts at about the 34 second mark). I asked Mr. Bugeyeguy himself if they could sell me one and he declined saying that there was too much fabrication involved.

Then I ran across the Electric Supercar Youtube channel and this episode on a Custom Vintage Charge Port. Still a lot of fabrication, cutting and drilling holes in the body, but the cool take away was that an Aston Martin flip-up gas cap has a large enough opening to allow for a J1772 port. I found this one on Amazon at a surprisingly reasonable price, so I ordered two. It took a while to arrive from the UK, but worth it!

Here's where the North American Charging Standard (NACS) comes into play: Now that Tesla has opened its Supercharger network to other EVs, nearly every other commercial EV manufacturer has endorsed the Tesla standard and will be building those charge ports into their vehicles. Here's the surprise I learned from EV West: the Tesla charge port has the same outputs as a J1772 including pilot and proximity connections and will work with J1772 charge controllers like my Thunderstruck units. While it will not support Tesla Superchargers, it will support Tesla destination (home) chargers as well as private and public J1772 level 2 chargers.

After a bit of trimming work with a Dremel tool, the NACS port fits the Aston Martin gas cap perfectly. Here's the bill of materials:

Aston Martin Vintage Gas Cap: Amazon

NACS Charging Socket: AliExpress

Fuel Neck Gasket: Bugeyeguys.com

Cantex PVC Elbow: Lowe's

2" ID Hose: O'Reilly Auto Parts

3" Hose Clamp: O'Reilly Auto Parts

The charging socket is trimmed to sit on the recessed ledge inside the gas cap. A  slice of the large end of the PVC pipe centers the socket in the fuel neck gasket and is secured to the gas cap with three supplied set screws. Finally the hose and clamp secure the assembly inside the rear deck of the car.

NACS charge port assembly

NACS to J1772 Adapter

Adapter fitted to NACS charge port

J1772 charge plug in place for a very tidy and elegant fitment

Postscript:

Robert mounted the new charge port on the car and it looks GREAT! Nice work, Mr Juarez. Robert writes: "The small details makes a ride unique and cool. Doesn’t matter if it’s an old school hotrod with a V8 or an old all electric conversion Austin Healey Bugeyed Sprite. The old gas tank port is the new place for the electric charge port !"